En garde!

We are 43.9% through 2012.  Can you believe it? Time has gone by so fast. Wowee.

According to Brené Brown, you need to be vulnerable to live life to the full. When you stop yourself from feeling vulnerable, you also numb your receptors of happiness and other feelings.

This has made me realise:

1. I'm pretty on guard all the time- emotionally and I try not to let things get to me easily.
2. I am harsh to myself and not compassionate enough to other people.
3. If Brené asked me about love, I would tell her about heartbreak, if she asked me about belonging, I would tell her the most excruciating experience of HSC English being exluded, and if she asked me about connection I would most definitely talk about disconnection.

This is something I will be working on. To be a better person to myself and everyone else around me.. and all that shizzzzzz :)

Yeah, I know I normally don't talk about this sort of stuff - but it's actually worth sharing and I'm sure 20 minutes of listening to her won't do you much harm. I like to think about this stuff - it is stress free and so much better than finance. Haha.

In other news, I went back to my "must read" books post and realised that I haven't made much progress this year.  All the books I have been reading this year are more... contemporary, I guess and aren't really in the Penguin Popular Classics range.  So, I went to the book depo and purchased The Scarlett Letter, Heart of Darkness, and Little Women.  I'm sure I've read the last book before, but I recall really enjoying it so... adding it to my collection! At ~$3 a pop, it doesn't add up to much at all. I also added A Walk to Remember in my cart because A) apparently it's well written and B) because I loved the movie.

Considering purchasing a Lonely Planet guide to the US, but I think I might check that out at the library first. Ideally, I would like to purchase a guide for each city I'm visiting, but I don't think that's very cost effective.
WHT:
Cleaned my room THOROUGHLY (pre-exam time ritual) moved out EVERYTHING, flipped and smacked the mattress, washed all my non-washed clothes (you know that pile of unclean - can't say dirty- clothes that you just haven't washed because you want to wear it again? Yeah, that pile), vaccumed, steamed, wiped, tossed out a pile of crap, and wow my room feels livable again.

Also got a chance to study solidly for a 5 hours, which is always good, but I feel pooped out now. Ten more days until my first exam. Eighteen more until my last.

Use your time productively! I may not be posting regularly over the next few days (maybe a few pictures).

Adios Amigos/Amigas.

CANTINA MOBIL

Err, can I say YUM?!

So apparently this van makes rounds to usyd every week on wed- bar holidays.

I was abandoned by A, but joined by a seagull in Victoria Park when I ate this lovely chicken burrito. From a VAN.

How smug do I look?

Special shout out to Jos! Thanks for letting me know about the van and sorry for rubbing it in. IT WAS GREAT :D

Delicious procrastination

I decided to hop off Facebook to get started on my mgmt essay due tomorrow. Got off the comp and my legs took me to the kitchen and I made myself an early dinner.

Do Chinese people cook with turkey? I'm glad I do. It's like a beautiful cross between chicken and pork.

Today I cooked everything separately (soup base for noodles, turkey, veges, and most importantly the special sauce in top) just to waste more time.

Yum.

Mmm... Mmmmmmmmm

An old mp3

Today, K and I found our old mp3 lying around. We scrolled through a few songs and came to this one.  When the song started playing, our eyes lit up and we were possessed...

... by the people we were many years ago.

We full broke into crazy shuffling yelling out the lyrics (I can't believe I still remember it)




Ahahaha. It's so spastic. Pretty much got a stitch after the second verse, but I didn't care. Feeling young is greaaaaat!

intellect and believing in fate

Bumped into a friend on the bus today. I didn't realise at first because I had my earphones plugged in and I was listening to a talk about optimism bias.  Anyway, K was full surprised that I was listening to a TED speech. I don't just read blogs and gossip columns ahaha. I am also into politics (to a certain degree) and other intellectual stuff too!  Hahaha, just because my earphones are plugged in, it doesn't mean I'm bopping to JB's Boyfriend. I could just nodding furiously in agreement with someone's really inspiring speech, or shaking my head to something Mitt Romney says (geez that guy really infuriates me).

Felt like sharing that because the same thing has been said to me 3 times already today by different people.  I thought I looked intellectual. Ahaha, I mean, with the glasses and everything. But I guess I wasn't really fooling anyone. Yeah, so just to clarify, like Shrek, I'm like an onion with many layers. I have different layers to face different people. I am not just superficial (yeah, someone told me I was and I just got really cross. How rude, K!) or goofy or food obsessed.

The truth is, I don't like talking about politics to people who have strong opinions like myself. Different people have different views and I find it harder to like someone who has different political views to me. I need to learn to separate things, and assess things by themselves, but my bias will always be there. So I'd rather not talk about politics with friends or randoms. At home, we have really heated debates about world peace, war and politics (and other things like Bride Wannabes, K's future, what time I should go to bed, etc).  So yeah, many thanks to M&D for bringing me up like this, and also JL who was such a good mentor and friend (and many thanks for introing me to TED all those years ago).

Anyway, onto the real topic I wanted to talk about today (all that text above is just an FYI because I've never had so many people question my intellect in one day. Haha, they weren't sceptical, just surprised).  Do you believe in fate?  Nowadays, I find myself thinking more and more about predetermined situations/results.

Maybe I was just really aware of my surroundings today, but there were 3 very distinctive people from a particular point in my past that I saw today.  I thought 'Is this a sign? Am I supposed to do something about this?'

And to add to that, I keep crossing paths with X (not an initial) recently, and there have been some eerie coincidences with this person as well. Every night I come home and before I fall asleep I think about this.  Every night, I end up thinking "WTF! THIS IS SO WEIRD! Am I supposed to be doing something about this? Why is this happening?!"

And THEN this makes me think about religion, and my attitude towards my faith. This will not turn into a religious talk (don't worry ahaha), as religion is something I keep to myself and don't feel comfortable talking about at all. But yes. Currently, even though life is great, my mind is often cluttered with many, many question marks.

Wouldn't it be nice if there were answers for everything?

(how dry is this post, huh?)